


Satellite Spybear

by SpaceCadetDHD



Series: The Frankenteddy Chronicles [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff and Crack, For Science!, Gen, M/M, POV John Sheppard, Rodney McKay can make anything work, Sentient Atlantis, Sleepy Cuddles, Slice of Life, Stuffed Toys, Whump, mcshep needs some bandaids, oh no the word count got long, references to DADT, remote control cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29018307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCadetDHD/pseuds/SpaceCadetDHD
Summary: In which two lessons are learned: Humans can pack-bond with anything. And Atlantis doesn’t require opposable thumbs to open doors.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: The Frankenteddy Chronicles [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100186
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Satellite Spybear

**Author's Note:**

> Annnnd we're back! Kudos to pebbles1971 and ronneem for beta assist!!
> 
> * * *

The day's off-world mission had not gone to plan. AR-1 returned home slightly singed around the edges and quite tired. As a bonus, Rodney had twisted his knee and broken fingers in a very talented fall that John wasn't sure anybody else could ever replicate. After the tumble Sheppard had taken a few weeks before, that was saying something. It wasn’t anything serious, though, but a temporary inconvenience at least, especially for Rodney. He wasn't the most adept on crutches on a good day, but without the reliable use of his hand and arm, the strain to his knee would just get worse.

Rather than risk it, Rodney was ordered to a wheelchair for a few days. He had less coordination with wheels than he did with crutches. The scientist and his cranky attitude were going to need help but not quite enough to warrant making him sit in the medical wing. That meant the team had to look out for their teammate at home, too, since they hadn’t saved him from taking a tumble down a ditch off-world. It seemed like a fair expectation; there would be no leaving anyone behind, even if they were just stuck in a wheelchair for a few days.

When Carson asked who would be helping McKay for the week, Ronon had never joined in on a round of _‘Not It’_ so fast in his life. Teyla helpfully proposed the team take shifts, which for Ronon meant food delivery service only, and that made the time division among the rest of AR-1 fairly easy at a two-way-split. Teyla got Rodney for the day shift so that the Lt. Colonel could stick to his usual rounds, and John took the overnights.

It also happened that Sheppard liked the arrangement because of reasons that had nothing to do with AR-1’s generally accepted territorial streak. His reasons were more Rodney-related, directly, and a different brand of territorial. Also, he had an excuse to stay overnight with Rodney, with no snooping as to why. John noticed that, despite his belligerent, injured state, McKay didn’t argue that part.

Carson’s only admonishment was that Rodney was to not put any weight on the injured knee, because none of the medical team felt like taking time from their busy schedules to plan for a complicated knee surgery. That, and that John was not to attempt racing in a wheelchair as they did with their RC cars. Rodney then spent the entire walk to his rooms trying to plan - out loud - a way to turn the wheelchair into a remote controlled scooter-car.

“It would take longer to scrounge the parts for that then you’ll even be in the chair, McKay,” John pointed out as he pushed the chair into Rodney’s room. “Just work from the benches for a few days. Someone else can stand up and chase after whatever.”

Rodney scowled up at him. “Have you seen the Neanderthals I work with? If you expect them to have fine motor control _and_ a modicum of intelligence, you will fry out their shared brain cells.”

“You heard Carson. If you screw this up, you’re down longer than just a few days. And the Neanderthals aren’t wearing a splint on their hand, so my money’s on their fine motor control over yours,” John said. He set the brake on the chair and then dropped to sit in front of Rodney on the edge of the bed. “So this isn’t so bad. We hang out a few nights until you get the wheels figured out.”

Rodney grumbled at him, something unintelligible because he was cranky and the medication was on its way to kicking in. John raised his eyebrows and applied the patented Puppy Eyes™ that worked nine times out of ten with everyone who wasn’t Ronon. Even cranky Rodney wasn’t immune, and the fun part about their relationship upgrade since his birthday was that whenever Rodney got stuck on it, staring at the playful gaze, John could sneak in and kiss him to bring him back. Rodney didn’t complain about that, either.

The genius pulled back enough to clear his head for a moment. “Wait just a - you can stay over? _All night,_ stay over?”

Sometimes it took him a minute, but McKay always caught on. John nodded. “Doc’s orders.”

That seemed to settle Rodney’s opinion on automating the wheelchair and he started waving for help to get out of it and onto the bed. John leaned up to get a shoulder under his arm, opposite his bad knee to pivot him out of the seat. A noise distracted him though and he was a little less graceful about it than he had planned. But he swore he heard the now well-familiar sound of Frankenteddy’s wheels skitter-slide over the floor. That didn’t make sense.

“Hang tight a sec,” John said as he got Rodney settled. McKay pulled a face, confused; abandonment on the bed had not been the man’s plan at all. But John left him there on his own to move the wheelchair away, over to block the door, and started looking for the sneaking remote control car that had been following him around off and on for weeks. It was a fun game, with the crazy RC equipped with a private-channel radio, for the kind of chatter that was _not_ allowed to go anywhere near their usual radio frequencies. One or the other of them would sneak it out when the day got a little long, so they could keep each other company long-distance via Frankenteddy for a little while. John had last seen the bear in his office the day before.

The fact remained, however that Frankenteddy, cute as he was, was still a little spybot bear. It was one thing for the bear to snoop when Rodney was at the controls. It was another thing entirely when McKay hadn’t touched a tablet in over three hours and had been off-world for twelve hours before that. If Frankenteddy was snooping in Rodney’s bedroom, that meant someone else had found the remote control program McKay had built for the tablets. That meant trouble. John ducked to look under the bed for the bear, even though there was no logical way the bear could have gotten under it.

“What are you-”

“Where’s Frankenteddy?” John asked, looking back up over the edge of the bed at Rodney. Rodney squinted at him.

“You had him last. Your office.”

“And you still haven’t figured out the door-thing, right?”

“No. Or the stairs.”

Still searching, John looked back at him from digging under the desk. “So he shouldn’t be in here?”

“Did you put him in here?”

“Nope.”

Rodney was still more confused now, but for entirely different reasons than before. “What about the infirmary?”

“What? Why?”

“I was in there.”

“Yeah, but I was _with_ you.”

“True.” Rodney’s shoulders slouched a little, apparently disheartened that John hadn’t had to spy on him. John shook his head and went looking for more shadows in the room that could be bear-shaped.

“I swear, I heard his wheels squeak.”

“The _wheelchair_ has wheels,” said Rodney. And it was reasonable but John shook his head.

“He has very _particular_ squeaks,” he said, fully confident in what he had heard. Rodney looked at him like he was concerned for his sanity. That was probably fair. John shrugged. “He does.”

“He is a bean bag bear and you did not sew on little beary bells-”

“He’s a spy-bear, McKay. We should probably keep tabs on him a little better than we do, huh?” John pointed out. Rodney frowned at him for the logic.

“Fine. Where’s my tablet?” He snapped his fingers expectantly at him because he thankfully remembered he wasn’t supposed to try to walk, let alone crawl back off the bed on his own. John checked the floor under the nightstand for the wheeled bear one more time before he went over to the wall by the door where he had dumped Rodney’s pack and other gear earlier in the day. He dug for the tablet and then brought it back to him.

“If you’re going to insist on calling Frankenteddy a _he_ then maybe I _should_ put little bells on him, hmm?” Rodney said, distracted booting up the tablet. John stood by and rolled his eyes.

“It’s just a thing. Atlantis is a _her-_ ”

“Frankenteddy could be, too. You didn’t consult the bear before you started labeling, is my point,” McKay said. “What if I prefer to think Frankenteddy is a _she_.”

“Well, I guess you’d know, You had the guts out on the desk for a week,” said John, waving toward the desk in question. The conversation was perfectly normal and perfectly weird, and both John and Rodney were equally committed to it. Rodney sniffed at him for the comment but still hadn’t looked up at him.

“And I used Atlantis’ data crystals and a naqueda chip, so if Atlantis is a _she_ and Frankenteddy is half-Atlantis-based-”

“That is _not_ how that works,” John pointed out. “That’s- Hey, you know how many times I stabbed myself on those stitches? That’s a vicious bear, could run DNA tests on it and I’m all over it. So if you’re gonna say the bear is part-Atlantis for a data crystal, your logic says the bear is part _me_. And that’s just weird.”

“Part me then, too,” Rodney grumbled, looking down at the pads of his fingers that weren’t in a splint, his nose scrunched up. Apparently the bear had required blood sacrifices to bring to life, not just to put together. John waved at his hand as Rodney confirmed his point.

“So, see? _Data-crystals_ do not _girl-bears_ make.”

“ _They_ , then,” decided Rodney. “Because if we’re wrong on the beary-bells, we can’t exactly consult Frankenteddy on their preference in the matter. So. Middle ground.”

John sighed. “Did you figure out where _they_ are, McKay?”

“Almost. Can’t tell. It’s dark,” Rodney replied.

“So drive it. Find light,” said John.

There was a familiar buzz of rubber tires across the stone floor and then a _‘thunk’_ as the car got stuck running into something. It was in the general vicinity of the bathroom, though, so John asked for the bathroom lights to turn on and went to investigate.

“Yep, bathroom,” Rodney reported as the lights revealed the bear’s location on his tablet screen. John stood in the door and stared down at the bear that seemed to be hiding at the back wall by Rodney’s big soaker tub. He frowned.

“You’re sure you didn’t fix the door-thing?” he asked.

“While I recognize that I am the only one possibly capable of cracking open the locks and clearances of the doors in this place to sync them to the demands of an inanimate remote control car, when exactly have I had the time?” Rodney called back. That was a valid point. John thought the lights off and then very definitely shut the bathroom door, using the wall panel to make sure it stuck.

“We should probably figure out how Frankenteddy got from my office to your bathroom if he- they can’t open doors,” he said. He turned back to see Rodney fiddling with the tablet, muttering “Already on it, thank you.”

With the spybear contained out of the way, eyes and ears closed for the night, John crawled onto the bed with Rodney. He saw his injured geek struggling with the touchscreen because of the splint and carefully tugged at the tablet. “Later though.”

“I can check the map history on the positioning system-”

“Or I can.” John waved his functional fingers over the screen to try to get Rodney to release ownership of the technology.

“Fine. Go to the drop-down-” And Rodney walked him through it until they found the maps. It wasn’t exactly useful, however, in the end.

“Oh. Uh. I guess I need to set up a timestamp,” Rodney said as they stared at an overlap of maps that was a mess of squiggly lines showing _everywhere_ Frankenteddy had been since the spybear had been brought online a month earlier.

“We’re good as long as no one else can access this program, right?” John asked. “We just need to know where the bear goes. Security thing. _No_ losing the spybots.”

That was not a welcome comment and Rodney’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Frankenteddy isn’t a spybot.”

“Spybear then.”

“No.” Rodney shook his head.

“Camera-and-microphone on wheels that transmits location data on an interceptable frequency that could be used for less than innocent purposes?” John tried. Because the bear was very definitely no longer just a stuffed desk-duster. Rodney’s expression loosened up a little.

“I should shield the frequency.”

John shrugged and nodded. “Maybe just a manual off-switch. Give Frankenteddy their own Iris. Just in case of trouble.”

“I wasn’t thinking about trouble when I added the radio and everything,” Rodney said, unhappy at the conclusion they had arrived at. John nodded his agreement.

“Me neither. But now that we are, might as well add to the to-do list. For now, we just gotta keep track of the bear, that’s all,” he said.

Rodney seemed to agree to that at least. “Definitely.”

“Bear-in-a-box,” John said.

“Or the bathroom,” added Rodney. John smirked at that.

“If they’re supposed to live in the bathroom, you oughta know Frankenteddy was hiding behind the tub, so keep an eye out before you go doing any striptease.”

“Thankfully not on my usual agenda,” said Rodney. John almost slipped out with a giggle but he caught himself. Rodney might have noticed, though, because he was grinning that lopsided smile at him for something suddenly.

"The Doctor or DS9?" John asked, diverting the topic far away from spybears and closer to acceptable distractions for a Rodney McKay who was otherwise injured and medicated. Rodney shuffled back on his pillows and gave John a judgmental squint.

"I'm going to assume that was rhetorical," he replied. John smirked and hauled his tired self off the bed to go trade the tablet for the larger laptop with the expedition's network of bootleg TV and other media-stuff. It had been a long day, and they were both a mess, but they could watch TV until they passed out and figure out the details later.

* * *

They both fell asleep, each of them caked in dust and grass-stains from their off-world trek, wedged onto Rodney's bed. His knee woke him up a few times. Figuring out if a half-awake, in-pain Rodney needed pain meds, water, food, or even just a bigger section of the blanket was no easy linguistics feat. John figured he had a partial understanding of the trials of new parents, unable to sleep through the night because someone wasn't having a fully functional moment. There was no crying, wailing, or tantrums, just confused bumbling. But they both survived.

Rodney was less loopy and more cranky the next morning. He needed food, but he needed a shower and clean clothes first, and that had been a very interesting _first_. The shower floor was slippery, but they managed, with John under his shoulder to keep Rodney from putting any weight on his knee. Rodney was still an adult, after all, and he could take care of a lot of things for himself, it was just that standing wasn't currently one of them. Figuring out who's hands went where was another, for either of the two adults involved. The big bath would have been impossible to get him in and out of, and it wouldn't have resulted in the awkward blushing and the random make-out against the wall under Rodney's weight.

By the time it came to towels and clean clothes, they could probably have placed pretty good in a three-legged race. No new injuries needed reported and both of them were quite happy. And sleepy. They were nearly to the door when John realized the problem with the shared shower plan.

"Your hair is wet," he blurted, looking down at the very much not fluffy mess on top of Rodney's head. Rodney ducked to one side to squint up at him.

"I shouldn't have to explain how _water_ works to you at this point-"

John waved him off, mildly frustrated. "No, I mean- so is _mine_. I, uh. We gotta wait. On the food thing."

"Oh." Rodney seemed to fade a little. "I need food, though."

"Right..." So John went back after a towel again and started scrubbing water out of his hair.

"Still wet," Rodney reported. "It just looks more rakish."

So Rodney impatiently sent him to the cafeteria on his own to bring food back. John left him by the bed, in the wheelchair, only after Rodney promised not to try walking or moving anywhere on his own. Then he hurried for the food. When he got to the mess hall, he found Ronon at the buffet, piling a plate high with protein and another with rabbit food and fruit.

"Hey," the big guy greeted, and John decided Ronon wasn't allowed to be a morning person anymore. It didn't make sense that he was wide awake and cheerful and John was yawning.

"They got the hot water out?" John replied, looking around for the hot water dispenser. Rodney had to have tea stashed in his room… or maybe the mess-crew had some coffee left…

"This works for McKay, right?" Ronon asked, rattling the tray with the rabbit food. It pulled John's blurry attention back and he blinked at the plate. _Oh, right…_ Ronon had the food delivery service part. All that hustle and he could have just _napped._ John shrugged and nodded, relaxed suddenly. He found a sandwich-thing that looked edible and found the coffee, juggling the sandwich so he could get two cups.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Ronon asked as they left. He was far too amused.

"Tired 'sall." John wasn't about to elaborate. They turned the corner down the hall and were met by the sight of Frankenteddy running into the wall. The RC bear backed up in a wide arch and then tried again, only to meet the same fate, slamming the nose into the wall. John sighed as Ronon snickered.

"He can't control it right. The splint-thingy is in the way," said John, remembering watching Rodney fumble with the tablet touchscreen the night before. He walked up to Frankenteddy and pushed the nose back down the hall toward Rodney's room rather than the direction of the turn the bear had so badly missed. Then he stepped carefully over the bear so Rodney could see who had interrupted his objective. Suddenly he and Ronon were being escorted down the hall by a speedy bear on a tiny go-cart. It stopped at Rodney's door and _thunked_ up against it. The bear definitely didn't have the door-thing figured out. That was good news to John.

He delivered Rodney's coffee and left Ronon to sit with him until Teyla got there. John went back to his own room to find clean clothes, at least something that he hadn't gone off-world in and then slept in, and started in on the demands of the day.

It took a few hours, but Frankenteddy eventually caught up to him. The bear showed up in his office, spun around the desk a few times, and then settled at the window by the door. John happened to be in the middle of trying to make his brain function on things that involved spreadsheet lines and supply math, so he didn't stop to chat. After a half hour of quiet, Frankenteddy backed up, adjusted course, and sped out of the office again just the same way they had entered it.

A couple of hours later, John got paged to Rodney's lab by a very confused sounding Czech. He detoured to get more coffee on the way there because it seemed like he was going to need it.

"What's up, doc?" he asked, looking around the familiar room as he entered. It seemed oddly quiet and relaxed without Rodney in it, which felt weird. Zelenka looked up at him and then shoved his glasses up his face and turned toward him. He pointed toward the floor in the corner of the room.

"Colonel. What is that? It has been in here and staring at me for far too long. I have seen it in here before, but Rodney talks to it. And he is not here now to make it leave," the man said. "Elizabeth said you would know."

"Oh, she did, huh?" replied John, distracted by the bear that sat, neatly parked between two rolling cabinets, watching over the lab. The bear now sported a bow-tie. Someone had tied a worn, snow-camo kerchief around Frankenteddy's neck, in a very neat bow that sat jauntily askew. He inwardly sighed and hoped Rodney hadn't been sending the bear places it didn't belong in his medicated state. He looked back to Zelenka. "Well, did you try talking to the bear like Rodney does?"

"Oh no. He is rather rude to the poor thing," replied the scientist. John grinned, grateful the rude conversations were the only ones he overheard. He patted Zelenka on the shoulder and stepped away to go corner the bear.

"I'll get the critter out of here for you," he said.

"What is it?" Zelenka asked. John picked up the car, at risk of having the wheels give him reverse road rash if Rodney got indignant about getting caught spying. He held the car up a little to show Radek.

"Just an RC car. It's McKay's," he replied. Zelenka shook his head, muttering under his breath about McKay's not letting him a moment of peace even on McKay's days off. That struck John as mildly hilarious but he managed not to laugh until he got to the hall. He was definitely tired.

When he got to Rodney's, Teyla let him inside, with the caution to be quiet. McKay was asleep. Had been for hours. John frowned at the RC bear he carried. The tablet was on the edge of the bed, so Rodney had probably been trying to practice with it before he fell asleep. All the same, though, he put Frankenteddy down in the bathroom, facing the wall, and closed the door. He pointed out the penalty-box bathroom trick to Teyla.

"Make sure Frankenteddy stays in there," he requested. He nodded toward Rodney. "I'm pretty sure he's too high to be trusted with the controls."

Teyla nodded, but she was frowning. "I haven't seen Frankenteddy all day."

John nodded, rolling his eyes. "He's been harassing Zelenka with the bear."

Teyla shook her head. "He's been asleep, John."

"Well, then who's been driving Frankenteddy around? They definitely got around… somebody added a bow!" John pointed back toward the closed bathroom door. Teyla shrugged, just as confused as he was.

"I surely do not know, but Rodney took his medicine shortly after I got here and has been mostly asleep. He has played with the tablet a few times, but-"

"The tablet's the controller," John said, feeling a strange relief. That solved the mystery for him, Teyla just didn't know how the car worked. She nodded her understanding.

"That makes sense then," she said. And John went back to work without waking up Rodney, settled on the matter of Frankenteddy's wanderings. A few hours later, the bear showed up at his office again, this time resuming the familiar spot under the desk. John shook his head, amused by Rodney's checking up on him.

"Have Ronon bring coffee," he said to the bear, but Frankenteddy just stared back at him, not jumping up to go play messenger. John managed to stay awake a few more hours, put out a few tiny fires, shoved the proverbial paperwork around his desk, and was very glad overall that AR-1 had been taken off the stargate rotation for a couple of weeks again. They had only been back in the game for a week after John’s mishap, and if Rodney had any more nights like the one before, the Lieutenant Colonel was going to need the nap-times at the safety of his desk. Frankenteddy escorted him back to Rodney's room at the end of the day and John quickly passed out.

* * *

The small detail that John was only a few weeks out from his own list of injuries started to tell on him. He slept about an hour before the pain in his side woke him up. He sat up suddenly from his snug curl into Rodney's side, the stitch at his ribs needing stretched out badly. He found Rodney awake and messing with the tablet, when he wasn’t aiming squinty eyed glances back at John, anyway. Rodney raised an eyebrow but the judgment wasn't there, just an unspoken concern. Whether the look of concern was for John's comfort or his sanity, John couldn’t quite figure out, but he was at least pretty sure it wasn't questioning his intelligence.

There was a question on his face, though, but Rodney didn’t voice it. It was a pride thing, John figured. There was no sense asking the guy who wheeled the wheelchair into the bathroom for him if he was feeling okay. It was probably safer just to assume he was, because two invalids trying to look after each other like that was a doomed project, and so far it was working out okay. And John didn’t have to actually _admit_ he was tired and sore, because, to his thinking, it was better if one of them stuck to the chair, to the whole business of healing, and the other just kept quiet until everything settled out.

"Giving Zelenka nightmares about bears again?" John said instead, nodding toward the tablet. Rodney frowned at him; and _there_ was the judgment-face.

"How should I know what his nightmares look like? It would serve him right anyway, all the sleep I lose, fixing his errors every day," said Rodney. He scrunched his nose at the tablet and tipped it slightly so John could see. The screen was a wash of colors in charts and graphs. "Like today, look at this energy spike, and nobody did anything about it. Not even an email-"

"Why didn't you ask him about it when you were in there?" John asked. He had to stand up, still trying to work out the pain in his side. Rodney tilted his head, mouth open, expression on his face absolutely baffled.

"When I was where?" he asked. "I've been locked in my room all day so I don't lose the ability to walk _entirely-_ "

John waved vaguely toward the door and shrugged. "The lab. You sent Frankenteddy in there to spy on him."

Rodney's mouth clicked shut. _That_ was not a good face. What was _that_ face? John scratched at his nose, instinct getting itchy; something weird was happening and he didn't even know where to start identifying the problem.

"Right, McKay?" he asked. "That _was_ you…"

"I was asleep. I sent Frankenteddy to find you for a little while, but then I fell asleep," he said. John scrubbed both hands at his face and trudged to the bathroom door. He tried to think positive, tried to will the bear into being where he had left them, because he surely wasn't getting _trouble-radar_ -pings by their little blue and black bear. That just wasn't what was happening. It wasn't allowed.

But the bear wasn't waiting there against the wall in the bathroom where he had put the car that afternoon. John walked back out, resigned, holding his ribs and missing sleep. "We gotta find Frankenteddy."

"I just told you, I sent them to your office," replied Rodney. John shook his head.

"They didn't stay there. Just, like, _maybe_ a half an hour. Forty minutes, max," said John. "I had to go get them from the lab. And then I put them in the bathroom penalty box, and they aren't there now."

Rodney went wide eyed and started stabbing at the tablet to pull up the RC application he had built for it. John went to kneel on the bed next to him and snoop over his shoulder. Rodney waved him down.

"Sit. Stop rocking the bed."

"Don't wanna," John muttered back. He pecked a distracted kiss to the top of Rodney's head to buy him off rather than sit; he couldn't snoop on the screen standing, but he wanted to stretch a bit more before he sat. And now they were going to have to track down a stolen spybear, so no more relaxing. Rodney didn't seem to notice. He was stabbing at the screen with his uninjured hand, balancing the tablet on the other, like he had a working system for it. But it was the tablet itself that didn't seem to be working. Rodney stared at it, jaw slack.

"Uh. The app has been locked out."

"What? What's that mean?"

"It means the controls were disconnected. There's no signal. Maybe nothing getting to the network to get to the app. But… I don't think that would-"

"I don't suppose it means the battery died," said John. Rodney looked over at him like he had lost his mind.

"Naqueda chip," he reminded, even though John had that very much in mind already. However anybody wanted to look at it, they had accidentally released an uncontrollable spybear on the city.

"Gotta go find Frankenteddy," John said. He was soon off the bed and grabbing his jacket.

"Hey! Wait up!" said Rodney, shuffling to the edge of the bed. "I'm going."

"I was going to go check my office-"

"So? If Frankenteddy can get to your office, then I can." Rodney wasn't looking likely to back down from that logic, so John steered the wheelchair back over to the bed and locked it, moved to help him balance into the chair. They had the routine down, it was no trouble, but it would definitely slow John down. He didn't point that out, just decided he would bend the rules a little on Carson's declaration that they not turn the wheelchair into an RC race.

They were halfway to John's office, taking the long way, Rodney outlining all of the things he should have done to the bear the first time, when Rodney let out a triumphant _Ha!_

"What?" John stopped on the ramp, not sure how to interpret the noise. Rodney held the tablet up.

"I'm in! I had to reroute through a dozen different directories to find the damn-"

"Then where is Frankenteddy?" John interrupted.

"Give me a minute, this is one handed, and I'm moving-"

" _You're_ moving?" John balked but waited. Rodney didn't reply, focused on the screen. A room popped into view over the screen in the familiar app frame instead of the lines of code Rodney had been looking at previously.

"Rec hall? I think it's the rec hall," Rodney said.

Of course it was the rec hall. The big room that was located down a few flights. And they had to take the ramps. John stayed where they were, considering his options. “What the hell are they doing in the rec hall?”

“Watching Cadman. And I think that’s Lorne and Stackhouse…” Rodney was squinting at the screen. John leaned on the chair handles to squint over his shoulder. There were a full six marines crowded around one of the tables in the rec hall, based on the number of legs that could be seen under it. He reached over to turn the sound on.

“I don’t think so, Major,” said Cadman’s voice over the speakers on the tablet. On the screen, she reached out and shoved something across the surface of the table, toward the center. “Raise.”

“It’s your money,” replied Lorne, the smile not at all wavering under the lieutenant’s threat. He shifted to move things on the table too. John shook his head. They were gambling. Frankenteddy had found an illegal poker game to snoop on. He stood up and patted Rodney’s shoulder.

“Get Frankenteddy outta there already. Before somebody guts ‘em for being a snitch.”

“What!”

“Rules are no gambling for money. We don’t have enough of it to go around out here, and the last thing we need is some kinda loan scheme starting up,” John told him. “Elizabeth set that rule in stone months ago. Games are fine, but not supposed to use anything worse than toothpicks to bet with.”

Rodney grunted his agreement with the call, but his attention was on the tablet, and on getting Frankenteddy out of the rec hall. A few minutes later, the bear met them in the hall outside Rodney’s apartment and they both watched as the car nosed up to the door and the doors slid apart.

“Tell me you did that,” Rodney said miserably. John stared, jaw hanging open. Rodney sent the RC car in ahead of them. The doors closed behind them, just like normal. Aside from the part where the bear had opened the doors for them in the first place.

“That was not me,” John finally reported. Frankenteddy sat on the floor at the end of the bed, looking as smug as a stuffed, hand-stitched, spybear could look. The view on the screen in Rodney’s lap showed both of their shocked faces from the low angle. A stare-down of sorts took place in Rodney’s room then, between a small stuffed bear and two very confused humans.

“You made me a spybear,” Rodney announced after a minute. John blinked at him.

“Now wait a minute-”

“Well, they are, aren’t they,” Rodney carried on. “Down there spying on a card game because there’s gambling. And you said they were in with Zelenka, earlier? Makes me wonder what he was up to. They’re a police bear. Atlantis hijacked my bear for a spybot.”

“Atlantis did _what_ now-”

Rodney waved the tablet at him. “I didn’t bury the files to the connection _that_ deep. I didn’t have them anywhere near Atlantis’ database. But guess where I found them, just _guess_.”

"You're telling me _Atlantis_ stole Frankenteddy?" John pointed at the bear staring innocently at them. Rodney nodded.

"According to the redirected operation paths, yes."

"How?" John dropped onto the edge of the bed in front of Rodney, startled by the news.

"I just _told_ you-"

"No, I mean how did Atlantis find out about the paths to begin with? Is Atlantis in _all_ of our tablets, redirecting _all_ of our files? Altering _all_ of our data? Across the whole expedition..."

"Well, likely no," said Rodney, brow furrowed. "I did use the data crystal differently. And I did have to integrate it to our technical specs and allow it direct access to our network…"

"So Frankenteddy just backdoored our entire network and Atlantis has been using that to play with a remote control car," summarized John. Rodney scrunched his nose and nodded.

"And spy on illicit activity," he added. John seemed to freeze up at that phrasing.

"Who's _definition_ of _illicit_?" he asked. He looked over at the tablet again. "And what is she _doing_ with it once she spies on it?"

Rodney looked up at John and then over at the bed he sat on the edge of, eyes wide.

"I never set _anything_ up to save, _no_ captured images, nothing. It was just streaming data, that's all, _ever_ ," he said quickly. But he was already shutting down the app and digging into the command files on the tablet. John squinted down at the bear next to him. The little traitor better not have been spying on him and Rodney or they were getting another lobotomy.

It took over an hour for Rodney to sort out the situation with the city. He had to switch to his laptop, which was at least a little faster because he could type faster one-handed than he could mess around with the tablet one-handed. There was a lot of arguing with technology, out loud, and the crisis of the day was mostly sorted so John slept through most of it. He put Frankenteddy in the woven basket with the lid, and then put the whole thing in the bathroom, and crashed out on the bed next to Rodney. It had become his favorite place, especially when Rodney was sitting up and fighting with the laptop; there was more room that way and John didn't have to curl up on his side.

When Rodney did find stuff worth his attention, John propped the pillows up a bit and peeked around Rodney's elbow at the screen. It turned out Atlantis did record some of Frankenteddy's adventures, but they had only started the day before, when John and Rodney had been off-world the whole day. The bear wandered around the entire city, letting itself into room after room, patiently climbing stairs that neither Rodney or John would have ever bothered with on the small wheels but somehow the city's AI had sorted out, inch by inch.

There was audio, but Rodney just fast-forwarded through the clips, watching twenty minutes of silent footage of life on Atlantis from the vantage point of a twenty-four-inch tall bear-on-wheels. The kids would take interest in Frankenteddy in the halls, but everyone mostly pretended they didn't see the bear. Which made sense, because the bear had shown up weeks earlier and was a frequent flyer between the various labs and John's office, even the rec hall a few times. Whatever surprise people might have had at seeing the bear was long gone.

"So… the city recorded the trips that the AI was in control of, but not the trips where it was you or me at the wheel," John said finally, nose scrunched up as he watched one of the Athosian kids build an obstacle course for the AI to wend the car through.

"Right, recorded so it could process," Rodney said, excited but sounding close to baffled. "The AI is learning. That means replay, permanent access, whathaveyou. Streaming data makes it work harder, so it moved it to the database - faster processing speed - and recorded for archiving. Mind you, this is theory, I can't exactly _ask the city_ what the hell it's doing, but… this is what it started doing when we left."

"We were only gone for a day," John pointed out.

"Long enough for the AI to hack the crystal," replied Rodney with a shrug.

"So we were gone too long and the city sent Frankenteddy looking for us?" John pointed at the screen, where the images were speed-playing through the halls on a track to what passed for Rodney's office. McKay blinked at him, then checked the screen.

He pulled up a map and this one was much neater than the one they had checked before. There were still their local equivalent of GPS-marked trails all over it, but only two or three lines. And they all very clearly showed familiar routes between the central control tower and Rodney's apartment. Frankenteddy could have come to life and wandered anywhere around Atlantis, but the Atlantis AI stuck to the trails Rodney and John usually sent the bear travelling. Including the infirmary, as the video on the other side of the screen showed Frankenteddy running into Carson on a collision course in the med bay.

"This is weird, right? I think this is weird…"

"A little. Maybe," Rodney allowed. He had no explanation for the path Frankenteddy had taken. "But it's just a bear. The city can see all this stuff anyway, with all the sensors-"

"The sensors don't have full-color video," John pointed out. He nodded toward the screen, where Cadman was crouched next to Carson's legs, and the lieutenant was playing with Frankenteddy. She pulled out a handkerchief and tied it under the range of the camera view, answering the question of where the bowtie had come from. "Now the city can map faces. Not just energy signatures and voice patterns"

Rodney made a face at the screen as Frankenteddy zoomed off down another hallway again. "That's harmless, right?"

His tone said he knew the answer and didn't like it. John shrugged. "As long as we have control of the city and the database, sure. Somebody else gets into it, maybe not so much."

Rodney stopped the video replay and started messing around with file commands again. He had that stubborn look on his face, with his chin jutted out just-so, his head lifted up. John was angled behind him still, slouched into his pillows, but he could see it. They had made a little monster that needed to be unmade, but that wasn't what Rodney wanted to do with it.

"Look, I'm not kidding around. The city saving stuff on our operations and our crew is a risk, McKay. It's not a likely one, but it's real," John pointed out, careful. "And the car making a backdoor to our entire network is an obvious danger, way up there on the list of things we don't want…"

"And as I said, this is the prototype to bridge our systems with the Ancients'... The only way for us to learn more about this is to let it happen. I didn't know it was possible for this to happen this time, so what else don't we know?" Rodney said. It was perfectly logical. Frankenteddy was an experiment. It was started and... evolving. And on the surface, it _was_ harmless.

"So what are you going to do about it as this prototype keeps showing you how the systems integrate and the Database learns more about us than we know about it?" John asked. Rodney paused, just the slightest hesitation, before he kept it up.

"I'm programming it to stay out of sensitive areas. If the city wants to learn about us, that's fine. It's our city, we should be welcome here, and all the little Athosian kids playing with Frankenteddy should be a nice, peaceful message, right?"

John snorted, amused. "What if she doesn't _like_ kids?"

"If she doesn't like kids, trust me, we would have been informed of that by now," Rodney replied. Mindful of McKay and Zelenka's shared detestment of small humans, John didn't make him justify the assurance.

"So what do we do? Just send Frankenteddy out in the halls and see what happens? Free-range?"

"We only have two days of data. There's no guarantee it will happen again," Rodney said, shaking his head at his laptop. "So we just go on as usual. Observe. Track. Now that I'm aware of it, I can stay on top of it, monitor the impact it has on the system. I mean, if this is what happens with an RC car, can you imagine what would happen if we integrated the crystals into our computers? The data crystals were _supposed_ to be simply storage. But this is something different."

"Huh." The possibilities turned over in John's mind as he watched the code on the screen Rodney was working at one-handed. “I want an off-switch.”

“I want a working hand. We don’t always get what we want, when we want it,” Rodney replied. John snorted, finding that bit of sage wisdom hilarious from his demanding favorite scientist. But they were still messing around with a lot of stuff they didn't need to let bite the city in the collective ass. He took in a breath, cautious protest still in the planning stages, when Rodney cut him off.

“I assure you, I understand the risks we’ve uncovered here, Colonel. I have at least a dozen more in mind right now than what you’ve got figured out, but now that we’ve made this discovery, we can’t ignore it, can we? I was going to try it with our systems if this worked in the first place, it was going to come to light eventually, and now we’re just ahead of schedule. We’re _not_ dismantling Frankenteddy. Stop _thinking_ about it so loudly.”

"It's kind of my job, McKay-"

"No, it's a bear, on a remote control car, and a technical experiment, which means it's _my_ job," replied McKay. He glanced back at John then. "And you're off duty anyway."

John huffed at that. "No I'm not. You just called me Colonel."

"Yes, because you're being an idiot, and I'd rather assign that to your rank than your actual person."

"Being concerned about Atlantis doesn't make me an idiot," said John, and he pushed himself up off the pillows a little more to have that argument out more effectively.

"Not technically, no. It's more the fact that _you're_ still on the injured list and shouldn't be stuck helping me race around after runaway experiments via wheelchair. And the fact that you think I didn't notice makes you the idiot, and therefore, all other input from you is naturally suspect," said Rodney.

"I'm just tired," John grumped at him, but Rodney wasn't having that.

"You're tired, and you're breathing funny in your sleep, and your ribs are still bothering you-"

"That was the other thing, not them. Stitches out last week, muscles not quite back-" John trailed off as the narrowed eyes glaring at him made it through the tired ramble. He had more or less just proved Rodney's point. "I'm fine, Rodney. I'm not leaving. I can still help."

"Or you could sleep," Rodney said. John shrugged.

"We're busy," he said.

"Frankenteddy is in their box. We aren't busy anymore," replied Rodney.

"Well, we aren't sleeping yet."

"I slept all _day_."

John nodded at the logic and stifled a yawn. " _Doctor Who_ it is then."

Rodney gave him a flat look for it, which John intentionally ignored, as he settled back down on the pillows. He tugged at Rodney's elbow in a not-subtle hint. If Frankenteddy wasn't technologically sinking Atlantis, then John wanted Rodney's attention. Even if he was cranky because they were both varying degrees of in-pain. Especially because of that.

Rather than pull up the video player on the laptop, Rodney shook his head and closed the screen. John let out a meep of protest, ineffectively reaching for it as Rodney set it on the wheelchair and well out of his reach. He quieted though when Rodney tugged on the hem of his shirt.

"Tomorrow you bring something to sleep in," Rodney chided him. Even still, he was peeling out of his own shirt. "Get your dirty clothes out of my bed for now."

John saw this as a fair compromise and sat up to oblige, stripped down to his boxers to match Rodney's sweatpants. McKay reached for the tiny bottle of pills from Carson that would get him through the night relatively pain-free. Then they puzzle-pieced together under the blankets, with Rodney's bum-knee using John's thigh as a pillow, and the rest of him tucked in at his side to weigh him down, heat him up, and lull him to sleep. Actual sleep, not a dozing catnap.

It wasn't like there were many perks to being injured, but the sleepovers were definitely at the top of the short list. Frankenteddy could just sit in their box until Rodney had both hands back and could build them an off-switch. And John could talk Rodney into building that off-switch _later_. Tomorrow. After he had gotten in some real sleep to catch up with all the chasing around after Rodney and a stupid spybear.

~*the end*~


End file.
